Human-Beings or Human-Doings?
Thursday July 31, 2014

"In work we have to find high ground from the arriving tsunami of expectation concerning what I am going to do. Work, like marriage, is a place you can lose yourself more easily than perhaps finding yourself. It is a place full of powerful undercurrents, a place to find ourselves, but also, a place to drown, losing all sense of our own voice, our own contribution and conversation." David Whyte

This quote from David Whyte's excellent book 'The Three Marriages', I believe begins to explore a number of the blogs and comments on Moodscope.

There have been comments on how challenges start at work or how people cannot be themselves at work and I'm sure some will also 'lose' themselves in work. And then of course we also have the complexity of marriage and our own identity.

Many of us will spend far more of our living life at work than anywhere else and yet we mostly do so as Human-Doings and not Human-Beings.

Work also, as local communities diminish, can become our most constant and supportive or disturbing 'community'. The challenge can come if our personal values conflict with those at work and whether we feel empowered or disempowered, lead or managed, loved or left?

In the midst of a seemingly endless life, however, we can spend as much time attempting to put food on the table or holding a relationship together that we often neglect the necessary internal skills which help us pursue, come to know, 'and sustain a marriage with the person we find on the inside', as David Whyte would say.

Why do so many of us struggle to feel connected?

There is so much around to 'separate' us from ourselves and that third 'marriage' (to yourself) - after the 'marriage' to work and/or spouse - to be OK with who and what you are.

If you cannot like and love yourself - can you possibly like or love anyone else?

Our real challenge in life is often to be strong enough to be who we really are, whether in work or not, as so much around us attempts to pull and push us into becoming someone else.

How much do you believe you are truly happy in your three 'marriages' - what you do and who you live with (if anyone) and crucially with yourself?

Les
A Moodscope member.

To read a poem Les wrote when he left as Chief Executive of Moray Council or to post a comment on the Moodscope blogspot:

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